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I'm rather new to aikido (especially when I hear about people doing it for 20-30+ years!) and I am not familar with all the styles. I practice at a Seidokan dojo which was explained to me as being an off-shoot from the ki society. We are told to work on small, gentle, flowing motions.

I've met Aikikai Aikidoaist; I would describe their style as being more active (more entering, larger motions) than ours.

I wanted to know if someone could give me a good explaination of the other (main styles). In particular, I would love one on Iwama ryu because I might be going to an Iwama ryu dojo when I transfer to law school.

I'm rather new to aikido (especially when I hear about people doing it for 20-30+ years!) and I am not familar with all the styles. I practice at a Seidokan dojo which was explained to me as being an off-shoot from the ki society. We are told to work on small, gentle, flowing motions.

I've met Aikikai Aikidoaist; I would describe their style as being more active (more entering, larger motions) than ours.

I wanted to know if someone could give me a good explaination of the other (main styles). In particular, I would love one on Iwama ryu because I might be going to an Iwama ryu dojo when I transfer to law school.

Thank you for your time!

Depends on what you prefer? soft or hard?.... plenty to choose from.... Iwama is considered a harder to hard style, encyclopaedic and pedagogic, but solid.....
Shodokan has competition randori shiai are considered heretics and thugs....
Yoshinkan, a hard style....
Yoseikan a comprehensive budo worth looking into....
The rest are soft to middling...... With the exception of some Traditional schools that rend to be a rarity these days.....

In the heat of an actual fight you won't have time to be gentle: you will be too busy being scared, working out the confusion, closing (unfortunately) your eyes under flashes of incoming arms & stuff, you will do goofy things, you will be too confused by hearing screams and crashing objects (on which you may trip...) and guys yelling and threatening you alleging they are going to kill you and women yell and cry and people fleeing all around and tables turned and glasses broken, you will see flahses of light when a blow lands on your chin and if you don't know that's normal you will be scared to death and think you have been heavily damaged wheeras you have not, and you will instinctively use your force too.

Once you feel confidence, which I haven't with aikido and which can come only by dealing frequently with aggressive ukes, eventually you will know what to do. Until you have not a clear feeling that you know what to do and what comes next even under a frantic attack, you won't be able to afford "gentle, flowing motions".
You can do them in a dojo, as you learn - but a real attacker will pose to you an entirely different challenge, under a pshycological point of view, under the brutal force he will produce, and as far as unpredictable items and weapons can be suddenly produced out of the blue.

I can't remember what heavyweights champion once answered, after having been brutally insulted by a guy and having being very kind in return: "once you have been worldwide champion, you can afford being gentle".

This applies to techniques also: once you are confident and comfortable within an actual fight, then your techniques can become gentle too, and probably you can place a nikkyo spending 1/20 of the energies you spend on it now.

I mean: it is not simply a matter of knowing the technical side: it is most of all a matter of being comfortable in a setting where punches start landing on your face for, sadly, this is what may happen in a real fight.
If you know how to be calm under fire because you know how fire behaves, because you have been there already, then you will be ready to be "gentle" too.

Tony summed it up pretty well actually. You have quite a few varieties of aikido in your area, go visit some other dojos. I can recommend a few depending on what level of intensity you're comfortable trying.

Aikikai is the mainstream style; it is very diverse, and indeed: the Iwama style is aikikai. I see it as being a middle ground between too martial, and too soft (i.e., obsessed with 'ki').
Some aikikai teachers:

Aikikai is the mainstream style; it is very diverse, and indeed: the Iwama style is aikikai. I see it as being a middle ground between too martial, and too soft (i.e., obsessed with 'ki').
Some aikikai teachers:

Aikikai is the mainstream style; it is very diverse, and indeed: the Iwama style is aikikai. I see it as being a middle ground between too martial, and too soft (i.e., obsessed with 'ki').
Some aikikai teachers: